


Tear your dreams asunder

by SwirlsOfBlueJay



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Coma, Established Relationship, F/M, Happy Ending, Major Character Injury
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-05 03:59:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16803214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwirlsOfBlueJay/pseuds/SwirlsOfBlueJay
Summary: Amy locks up the bookstore, as diligently as always even though she’s running late for date night. So when she gets the call she expects that it’s Jake checking in. It’s not.There’s a stranger on the other end of the line, telling her there’s been an accident.And just like that her world falls apart.





	Tear your dreams asunder

2013

Amy locks up the bookstore, as diligently as always even though she’s running late for date night. (She had stayed open longer to help chat through a few recommendations with a young girl. Owning a small book store was a tough business and she knew the value of luring repeat customers). So when she gets the call she expects that it’s Jake checking in. It’s not.

There’s a stranger on the other end of the line, telling her there’s been an accident.

And just like that her world falls apart.

*

Amy sits in the waiting room, biting her nails. She needs a cigarette, but doesn’t dare move. She scrolls through information on her phone, even though she doesn’t know what she’s looking for, making lists in her head. Amy paces and hovers and tries to steal scraps of information everywhere she can. Her gaze intermittently flicks to the clock. They aren’t telling her enough. How can she prepare for every eventuality if they don’t tell her anything.

Then Jake’s out of surgery and she’s allowed into his room. 

Her stomach lurches and she loses her breath at the sight of him. Broken and swollen and stitched back together.

She looks at the machines, sits down and takes his hand, and waits for him to wake up.

*

He doesn’t.

“Shouldn’t he be awake by now?” Amy asks, trying to keep the panic out of her tone.

“Sometimes patients take a little longer,” Dr Wells answers, “It’s nothing to worry about.” 

She nods. She rents a wheelchair and hires a nurse and organises for a temporary ramp to be put over the steps up to their front door. All while still holding Jakes hand. 

Other people come and go. Amy doesn’t really take them in. Jake’s foster dad Raymond wordlessly presses a sandwich into her hand. Her stomach growls and she realises she hasn’t had anything other than coffee as long as she’s been here.

Jake remains, lying there, unmoving.

She reads article after article on time taken to wake up after this kind of trauma, finds statistics, and makes a spread sheet.

*

The nurses start sending her concerned and sympathetic glances. People start telling her she should leave. That she’ll be no use to Jake if she just wastes away by his bedside.

“Jake will be fine,” They all say.

She ignores them.

Until Raymond looks at her, and states in a sad monotone, “You will be fine.” 

And she thinks, for possibly the thousandth time, that she really would like to be like Raymond when she grows up. She picks up her bag.

“I’ll be an hour.” She doesn’t ask him to stay: she knows he will.

*

Amy has set up make-shift living quarters at the hospital. She’s done her research, so when Dr Wells sits her down she already suspects what’s coming.

Jake is in a coma. And it’s likely he won’t be waking up soon.

“These cases are impossible to predict,” Dr Wells says, “He could wake up in a week or a month or… he may never wake up at all.”

And she cries, ugly, loud, wrenching sobs.

*

She makes several binders: About coma patient care and communication, about stimulating coma patients, and medical facilities, and payment plans for said medical facilities. She talks through all of this with Jake until her voice is hoarse, like maybe he’ll hear her and wake up.

Amy spends her days hoping and her nights dreaming, of a smiling Jake asking her what she’s on about, telling her that this was all one hilarious prank, confiding that he’s been awake this whole time. She wakes and feels lead in her chest at the sight of him so still.

*

The vultures are already circling. They want to kick Jake off the board of Nakatomi Tech- Jake’s company- the one he built from the ground up. She wants to punch Keith in particular as he sidles up to her with his faux sympathetic smiles and says, “We’re just doing what has to be done to keep Jake’s company alive.”

They are wary of her though. They know better than to underestimate her.

(She remembers the first time they had tried to shut Jake out. Despite having founded a highly successful company Jake was still surprisingly atrocious at paper-work, and they had found ways to run rings around him.

Jake kept pulling one brilliant idea to stave them off after another, each more impulsive and crazy than the last. But with every new attack they chipped away at him further until it looked like he would fall.

Then he had asked her to help him. He’d grinned at her with an absolute certainty that (even though he had put his all into it and failed) she would be able to fix it.

She remembers the boards looks of smug scorn as she’d taken a seat. All of them assuming she was insignificant, only there because Jake was too cowardly to face-down defeat himself.

She had taken their paperwork and handed them their asses.)

Charles tries to do his best to help, but he doesn’t have that much clout with the board. She knows Jake would be just as confident that Amy would kick their asses now. And it feels like she’s letting Jake down; she wishes she had the energy to fight this, but- with everything else going on- she just doesn’t.

*

One month passes, then two, then three. Amy sells the book store. She needs the money, a better health plan and a job where she doesn’t have to work all hours of the day and night to keep afloat. It was her dream and it saddens her to let it go but she almost has no room for the grief of it. It’s just one more loss on the pile.

She becomes a librarian. And slowly, her life slides into a routine.

Amy goes to the hospital first thing in the morning, stays until she has to leave for work. And then returns to Jake’s bedside after work, staying until late when she finally returns home for a few hours of sleep. 

She’s coping. Her fingers are stained yellow from smoking and her hair’s no longer every-strand-in-place when she heads to work. But she’s dealing with this new reality.

She’s still waiting for Jake to wake up.

*

All the people who were around all the time at the beginning aren’t anymore. She doesn’t blame them. They have their own lives.

Raymond still stops by every Tuesday and Thursday night like clock-work. It’s comforting. 

She sometimes goes home on Thursdays after work because she knows Raymond will be with him, but it only leaves her miserable. Staring at the places Jake used to fill with his childish, amusing, exhilarating energy.

She misses his smile and his laugh and his voice. And sex, she misses sex.

She misses running her hands down his spine. And misses him rambling about complete nonsense.

She even misses his random messes; one time she found a shoelace in the fridge and a spoon in a vase- how does that even happen.

*

2014

“After all this time, it’s unlikely he will wake up,” Dr Wells tells her.

Amy nods. She knows this, even maybe understands it. But it doesn’t change anything.

Someone says, “You need to move on Amy! You need to live your own life.”

And she has to stop herself from laughing, everyone seems to have some variation of the same thing to say to her.

“Jake would want you to be happy!”

Well of course if that’s what Jake would want. What about what she wants?

“I wish they would all just stop,” she tells Raymond one sunny Tuesday.

“Hmm.”

“I’m not here out of some obligation or vow to my husband. I’m not here out of guilt. I’m here living my life, because he is my life and I want to be here, with him.”

“But he’s not here Amy,” Raymond states gently.

And she’s appalled. It’s the first time he’s agreed with everyone else. It’s unfair and uncalled for. And it forces her to think, to actually consider what she’s been too stubborn to.

Is she really going to spend the next years, even decades of her life, waiting for someone who doesn’t even know she’s here?

*

Amy stares at all the bills again, budgeting and re-budgeting, moving things around, staring blankly at the numbers. It doesn’t matter what she does. She’s going to have to sell some of the Nakatomi Tech shares.

She goes to work calculating, figuring out the right balance of having enough to cover the bills versus leaving Jake enough of a share to salvage some semblance of control when (if) he wakes up.

She knows if Jake could talk he would say, ‘sell it all babe, I don’t care’ even though he would care and his heart would be breaking, he would want her to do this if she needed the money. It still feels like a betrayal.

(She remembers asking him what he did and him beaming as he told her he made ‘awesome spy gadgets’.

Of course a lot of it was boring stuff like creating more robust anti-virus software. But there would be the times where he would need to find a solution for a unique problem, a surveillance op that needed a camera where there was no space for one or an audio feed to filter out a loud heavy metal background to the whispers underneath.

His eyes would be wide and he would have the same smile on his face that he had whenever she said ‘I love you’, as he would explain the latest invention of -in his words- _Amazing Tech Genius Jake Peralta_.)

*

“I feel like everything’s just on pause. An awful pause. It will un-pause and everything will be okay again.”

“It’s a terrible limbo,” Raymond says. “Only you can choose what your life will be.” 

She promises herself that she will try.

Amy limits her hospital visits to four days a week. And she joins a Thursday night class and a Monday night book club. She goes to work with her hair perfectly in place and her suit with no trace of wrinkles.

And two months later she decides to go on a date. It fills her with trepidation but she also doesn’t really care. It’s more about the milestone than anything else. Another thing on the list that needs to be done.

She goes out with Dr Wells, Teddy- his name is Teddy- it may seem weird but he’s always been nice to her and he already understands her situation. Besides, going out trawling for men feels like too much.

It’s a good dinner, pleasant and safe and comfortable. And she says yes to a second date and a third.

There’s the inevitable spike of guilt when she and Teddy end up in bed together, but she pushes it down.

*

Teddy helps her work through it all. It’s almost like she’s waking up and coming back to the world, finding some semblance of normal.

She cries, a lot. She’s finally allowing herself to mourn. Jake’s never waking up. She’s never going to be with him again. She has no idea how she’s going to live the too many decades between now and her death. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

She’s just waiting for Teddy to dump her due to the ghostly third-wheel in their relationship, but he doesn’t. Instead he holds her and lists every bone in the human body and doesn’t let go.

They eat breakfast together and he kisses her goodbye and sometimes it’s good but sometimes it just reminds her of what she’s lost.

But at some point, she steps into Jake’s room, and realises that the weight in her chest that’s been ever-present for the last year and a half is no longer there. She breathes and tells Jake she’s sorry.

*

She breaks up with Teddy after seven months. Their relationship was nice, but that was all. It still felt too much like settling. And she’s missed being by Jake’s side most nights.

She keeps going to class and her book club, but returns to her old routine of visiting Jake every night she’s free.

She returns with a new invigoration. The terribleness of the situation is that there’s no way of moving on from someone who’s still there and yet not. He’ll never talk to her again or laugh with her or walk down the street holding her hand. But she’s grieved and accepted. Jake isn’t waking up. That’s okay, well it’s not okay, but well, it is what it is.

The amazingness of the situation is that Jake is still here. Breathing, heart-beating, alive next to her. She can hold his hand; she can curl up next to him. She can smell what remains of his Jake-scent beneath the antiseptic and hospital shampoo. She can talk to him. 

It’s a little creepy. But it’s not like she’s thinking of this as a relationship. She’s accepted that she’s going to be a spinster, who, if you look at history were some badass independent women.

Raymond accepts her decision even though he gives her stoic expression number eight which means he thinks the whole thing is a little crazy.

This is her life now and she intends to live it to its fullest.

*

2015

Teddy, no Dr Wells- he’s very definitely in doctor mode- sits beside her, tentatively, with a look on his face. She has a feeling she’s going to need a cigarette.

“Jake has been in a coma for two years. It’s time to begin thinking of choices.”

“Say it,” Amy snaps, sharp and angry and bitter.

“It’s time to pull the plug.” 

She’s free-falling, no parachute, no air. There’s a loud buzzing in her ears and her vision whites out. When she comes back to herself an intern is talking to her about organ donation.

She hisses, “Get out.”

*

Dr Wells comes to speak to her again the next day,

“Amy, I know this is hard…”

“No. It’s not hard, because we’re not pulling the plug.”

“Amy…this isn’t any good for him and it isn’t any good for you.”

“I love him. And sure there may be obstacles, like him being in a coma, but I’m not giving up on us,” Amy turns to Jake, taking his hand in one hand and stroking his hair with the other, “I just care about being with you.” Then shrugs sheepishly at how creepy that sounds.

*

The hospital keeps on at her. So she takes Jake and leaves. It’s more complicated than that of course.

Setting up Jake’s bed and all his machines in their apartment is a nightmare. She already knows most of what’s needed to look after him, but she does a few extra courses and seminars anyway.

She lies in the too-small bed with him, not caring about the guard rail pushing into her back.

*

Amy still keeps an eye on Nakatomi Tech, even though it seems like a far off distant thing- a story from another life- she carefully cuts newspaper clippings and notes down statistical analyses. It’s nothing as elaborate as a binder, it does have its own little folder though.

Besides it’s the only thing she and Charles have to talk about together. Even though their meetings become rarer as time goes on. Charles’ heart is on his sleeve and his very visible disappointment at Jake’s condition feels like a too-jarring mirror. 

(She remembers helping Jake with his budget. Die Hard on in the background as a bribe to keep his attention along with cheese puffs and orange soda on the blanket in front of them.

And Polish food with hot cocoa for her as a thank you.

Her fingers twined with his, the sun drenching the place in a strange orange-yellow, a kiss to remove a smudge of sauce.)

*

She starts every day by tending to Jake, a sponge bath, a change of clothes, PT to prevent muscle atrophy, check his machines and tubes and vitals, check her text alerts for said vitals. Then she showers and makes herself breakfast and gives him a chaste peck goodbye before she walks out the door. Amy has the routine down pat, it’s flawless, and she sinks into it, letting it calm her. She talks to him in the evening, tells him about her day, about what she’s been thinking. They are home, this is home, or as close to a version of it that’s happening. She’s looking after Jake. She’s looking after herself. She’s doing well at work. And she’s out living her life.

*

2018

Amy pumps Jake’s left leg for ten minutes and then his right, unsmiling. She’s so tired, just going through the motions. Right arm. Left arm. She’s not even thinking, she’s done this hundreds of times before.

She hates it but a part of her- and not an insignificant part at that- is just waiting for Jake to die. To let go of this inanimate shell.

Amy gets the first text alert of a spike at ten thirteen in the morning. She allows herself a moment before shutting her thoughts down. At first she used to rush home excited at every spike, but now she knows better. It’s just a reflex, apropos of nothing. At two-twenty-eight she gets another text alert, this one more serious, followed by another five in the next forty seconds.

He’s flatlining.

Oh. She thinks. This is it then. This is the end. And suddenly it’s too soon, she’s not ready, how did any part of her think it was better if Jake died. And she’s running home, because maybe if she’s there, she can do something. Anything. She chokes out a sob but doesn’t let it slow her down. 

Amy’s fingers tremble as she finds her key, logically she knows she’s too late- she doesn’t care. She slams the door open and runs into Jake’s room.

His eyes are open. There’s a confused expression on his face. The leads are discarded on the floor.

Jake’s alive! Jake’s awake! Relief and joy and ecstasy flow through her like nothing she’s felt before. 

Amy runs to him, her grin is painful and feels like it might split her face in two, she wraps her arms around him. And he lifts an arm- clearly still weak in spite of the PT- patting gently in an attempt to hug back. And Amy squeals. Jake’s touching her, actually touching her under his own power. 

She stays there, holding him, not wanting to break the moment.

*

When she lets go Jake still seems confused by his surroundings, so she asks, “Do you know where you are?”

Jake shakes his head and alarm bells begin ringing. Amy forces herself to stay calm, he’s been in a coma for five years, a little disorientation is normal. “We’re in our apartment.”

Jake frowns, his confusion increasing. She probably shouldn’t push, it will likely make things worse, but she can’t not ask, is none of this familiar, gesturing to their joint possessions and furniture.

“Sorry,” Jake rasps. 

And a truly awful thought occurs to her, “Do you know who I am?” 

He looks at her like she’s being ridiculous and for one terrible moment she thinks she’ll shatter.

“Amy.”

And she breathes again. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Jake sends her an adoring gaze and her stomach flips, happily this time, she has missed him looking at her, so much, it feels like drinking sunshine. “Our wedding.”

“Oh.” He’s forgotten their entire marriage. That’s fine. That’s okay. It’s probably temporary anyway. She’s completely calm and in control. (Besides it could be so much worse). 

But then Jake says,

“What happened, was I chasing a perp, did I get injured in a super awesome die-hard explosion?”

And then the alarm bells blare.


End file.
